Why I Threw Away My Brand New Mac Book Air

And now I'm writing this blog post as a cautionary tale for all aspiring Mac wannabes … as I was at this time last year.

I'd been using a Dell laptop running on XP since I began seriously trying to make money online in 2008.

It's so heavy now in comparison with modern laptops – but at the time it was great, had lots of storage and was the best PC I'd ever owned.

It cost about £500 or thereabouts and was funded by grant via a ‘get started in business' course that I'd just attended in my home city.

I've really punished that laptop, and things got so busy with launch after launch when things took off for me, I literally didn't have the time to make the transition to a new PC … even though the old one was driving me mad!

It was only after doing all the work for the Limitless Profits launch at the end of last year – with my old laptop constantly ‘freezing' and jamming up on me – and taking 10-15 minutes to start up in the mornings – that I decided ‘enough is enough' and it became a serious business productivity issue for me.

I'd heard about Macs, tried out a few, talked to people about them, and knew that I wanted a MacBook Air next.

My plan was to buy that, see how I got on, then buy a full Mac desktop system if I liked it.

So in December 2011 I switched to a Mac, sick to death of Windows and all the problems it had caused me.

I thought there would be no turning back …

Like driving in a foreign county

There's no doubt about it, my new MacBook Air was slim, light, cool, and sexy – it had a lovely sharp screen and boy did it start fast – I loved that fast boot up … 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes!

My new Ultrabook

The software I use everyday is Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Camtasia and Snagit.

So, at great expense, I bought new editions of Photoshop and Dreamweaver and downloaded Snagit and Camtasia for Mac … I also paid for Screenflow which many people had told me was better than Camtasia.

And so I encountered my first Mac-related disappointments.

All software is not created equal, and for some reason, software like Camtasia which is brilliant on a PC … well, it's rubbish on a Mac.

I don't want to sound like a luvvie, but it was seriously a ‘I can't work with these tools' tantrum moment.

Screenflow was the same – I really don't consider this to be a Camtasia replacement – so I ditched that quickly … and as for Dreamweaver … the layout was all over thee place, I just couldn't find anything I was looking for.

In addition to all this, it was just like driving in a foreign country – I knew what I wanted to do … but nothing was where it was supposed to be.

I couldn't do a simple ‘right click, save as' on images, the folder structure was different and a bit bizarre and the bluetooth mouse which I'd bought (I haven't even mentioned that yet!) was driving me spare with its lack of responsiveness and general unintuitive design.

So I bought the Parallels software – which allows you to run Windows on your Mac, replaced the bluetooth mouse with a regular one and asked those very nice people at Adobe to replace my Mac software with PC versions … which they're very happy to do by the way!

But now, with Parallels added, my Mac was full!

Yes it was full … all 128 GB of it.

For goodness sake, this isn't an Amstrad computer in 1990, this is the 21st Century … and I've run out of storage space already?

So I get an external hard drive to manage my files but I've only got 2 USB ports on my Mac … one I use for my mouse (remember that lousy bluetooth mouse I bought?) and the other I used for my mic … so I was out of USB space already.

What a waste of a lot of cash!

So over the last few months – having spent over £1200 on this MacBook Air – I have been unproductive and disorientated (my lovely MacBook Air kept jamming up through lack of space, but then wouldn't let me access the drives via Parallels to sort it out.

I kept having to plug and unplug peripherals due to lack of USB space … and I even tried taking XP off the Parallels area and substituting it with Windows 7,which I'd never really got along with.

Then something strange happened …

I fell in love with Windows 7,which suddenly made more sense to me having used a Mac … in fact it was cool like a Mac, but once again I knew where everything was kept.

Believe me, the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side of the fence!

And life started to get better, except my Mac still refused to work every time I downloaded a medium sized file onto it and I still didn't have enough USB slots.

And then I snapped!

My Mac jammed up one too many times when I was rushing to get some launch work done and at that point I made the same business decision that I'd made 8 months before … only this time more reluctantly,because I'd just spent over £1200 of my money on this laptop!

Coincidentally, my daughter sat on her laptop and broke the screen at the same time … so I decided that if my daughter had my wife's cronky old laptop as a replacement, my wife could have the hottest web surfing machine in the history of man (my Mac) … and I would do what I should have done 8 months ago and got an Ultrabook:

A fraction of the price (£600) …

Plenty of USB sockets …

A lovely sharp screen …

Thin, sexy and portable …

Long battery life …

500GB storage …

All my software works …

Fast boot flash drive …

In short, I love it!

Not actually my wife … but a simulation of the scene with her new Mac 🙂

Returning to a PC feels like coming home after a long holiday in an uncomfortable hotel … it's a blessed relief.

I'm sorry Microsoft, I take back all I said … I love Windows 7 now and my real problem was that I should have replaced my old XP machine ages ago, I was thrashing it and it wasn't up to the job.

But I was seduced by the lure of the Mac, I thought the grass was greener on the other side of the fence … and I was wrong 🙁

I love my new Ultrabook and I want to issue a warning to all marketers who think that the grass might be greener on the other side of the fence that it wasn't for me … it caused me no end of problems and I really regret ever trying to make the switch.

It's the money that I've wasted that hurts most though – that's really painful!

My advice? Check out Ultrabooks before you make the switch, they're wonderful things and offer everything that a Mac does … at much less a price!

Meanwhile in Mac land … I can hear my wife cussing because although she's now the owner of the fastest web browsing machine on earth (she just runs it as a Mac) she can't work out how to move a web page up and down and it's frustrating the life out of her 🙂

3 Comments

I’m so glad I’m not the only one who can’t abide the MAC “hype”…. I have had odd occasions to try to help my dad with things on his mac. My brother is a mac-nut and the family business uses one …. I hate the thing!!Mike recently posted…What Lens Should I Obtain For My Digital SLR Camera?

The first thing that turned me off from Apples and Macs was all those little icons. I had no idea what they meant nor how to find out. I once worked in an office where I was forced to use a Mac, until they sensibly converted to PC. Win 7 of course is now obsolete, and Win 10 I find is a nightmare. I now use Ubuntu almost exclusively. It comes with nearly all the software I actually use already installed. I suggest you upgrade to Linux.

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